1/17/19

While there I learned about the concept of makai and mauka. Makai means "towards the ocean" and mauka means "toward the mountains" and the words are used to tell folks which side of the road something is on. I could do a whole year of Hawaiian themed renders but the first two I wanted to attempt were a representation of the Makai/Mauka dichotomy. As this image looks towards the mountains, expect the next in the series to look towards the ocean.

1/10/19

"Greenmire" is new in the gallery this evening. I actually started this one before we left on our trip and hoped it would render and be finished when we returned. It was indeed finished but I still wanted to tweak a few things so I held onto it for a bit.

I am already working on a new image (or series of them) inspired by our visit to Maui. Stay tuned!!

12/15/18

I vividly remember back in 2001 showing one of Jessica's friends my (then) recent "Ornament" render. She told me it looked nice but the ornament itself was "kinda plain".

For this update I used Plant Factory for the boughs AND to create the ornament itself. I used Lightwave to create a displacement texture for the ornament and that turned out to be the most time consuming part. I went through a LOT of different variations before I found one (a Flame Fractal) that I liked. Anyway I hope it looks more interesting now.

It's still kinda plain but a good wallpaper doesn't need to be too flashy...

12/3/18

Hopefully it isn't too early to post a Christmas wallpaper. This piece grew out of my attempts to create aurora using Plant Factory. That remains a work-in-progress but you can judge my early results here. The tree was modeled using Plant Factory and I used displacement to (hopefully) make the "snow spheres" look more natural.

Should I do more Christmas wallpapers or more "non-Holiday" winter scenes?

This scene was an exercise using Plant Factory to model hard surface, non-plant, objects. Normally I would have modeled and rendered a scene like this using Lightwave, but Plant Factory objects work so well in Vue that I may go this route from time to time.

I hope you enjoy it! I put this one together on Bucephalus while my new Christmas project finished rendering on Shadowfax. It should be ready very soon!!

11/13/18

I've created a lot of very different plants using Plant Factory and I've used it to create some interesting "non-plant" objects (tornadoes, aurora, and snow for example). This time I wanted to see if I could use Plant Factory to model a spiral galaxy.

The galaxy object was rendered in Vue (I also experimented using Lightwave) and then that was used as a background for the scene you see here. I hope you enjoy it!

11/1/18

"Three Moon Bay" naturally lent itself to a sunny daytime view. I tried something a bit different with the water in Vue with this one. Usually I set the water to absorb sunlight, resulting a darker and more reflective ocean. This time I set it to scatter the light so the water is a bit brighter.

10/19/18

Hard to believe that I've made at least one Halloween render every year since 1998. Sure, some of the early ones look pretty rough (as my boys have been reminding my lately) but I think looking at the whole collection shows a pretty good cross-section of my growth as an artist over the years.

If you look at my top Halloween images you will notice that the top rated renders can be used as wallpapers any time of the year. I've tried to go that route with "Harvest Moon", my (first) Halloween(ish) offering of 2018. I hope you enjoy it.

10/12/18

It seemed like a good idea to attempt an autumn version of "Sliver of Sun" even though it's a high altitude landscape and the trees aren't your usual colorful deciduous varieties. Honestly I think it turned out OK but it isn't really my favorite Autumn render. The camera is quite far from the trees here an I think the intervening haze mutes the colors a bit.

10/08/18

The original idea here was to create a "metallic flower" using Plant Factory. Tried rendering it using Vue but decided that Lightwave allowed me a bit more freedom to get the look I wanted. Of course I decided certain parts needed to glow :-)

10/01/18

After a few more natural-looking Autumn landscapes I thought it might be a good time to journey offworld for brief excursion. Like many of my planetscapes this one started life as a space only scene which I then used as a backdrop in Vue.

09/21/18

These tree models were created in Plant Factory to add to "Ethos (Autumn)". I put together this simple scene to test out how they look "close up" and figured it looked interesting enough to post in the gallery.

09/16/18

I'd always planned to do a day version of "Ethos" and, looking at the calendar, it made perfect sense to set the scene in Autumn. In case you are wondering, I added some foliage to this version as I thought the original (while it worked for a night scene) was a little bare looking for this purpose.

09/05/18

Playing around with the flower models I created for "Biome" here to create something more translucent, crystalline and colorful. I modeled the "crater" using Medium to give the blooms a dark neutral surrounding. I created three different versions (the other two are in the Pickle Jar) and asked my son Jason which he preferred for the gallery. This is the one he picked :-)

08/28/18

I started this scene around the same time as "Ethos", again using objects that I modeled using Oculus Medium. The plant life was all custom modeled using Plant Factory. For some reason this scene took an obscenely long time to render but I hope you guys feel it was worth the wait.

08/21/18

More work with Oculus Medium creating a cave opening. There's actually quite a bit in the background but for now I've chosen to hide most of it in a dense mist. Hopefully the bits that show through are enough of a hint at what lies beyond. Maybe I will show a bit of more of it if I do an autumn version...

08/12/18

I've read out-loud to my boys nearly every night since they were born. It's just something we've kept up even as they have become teenagers, always finding a next book to read. Over the years we've moved from Dr. Suess and Margaret Wise Brown to L Frank Baum and Brandon Mull, from Lloyd Alexander to Neil Gaiman. The past few months we've been enjoying Brandon Sanderson's "Mistborn' and "Stormlight Archive".

We've been reading "Oathbringer" lately and a description of the "cognitive realm" called "Shadesmar" really got stuck in my circuits. Without giving away too much, it's a dark land of black obsidian with colorful crystal trees (and lots of spirits). I thought it would make an interesting challenge to render. Learned quite a bit in Plant Factory about wind and controlling leaf color.

I don't know how many more books Ian and Jason will want me to read as they get older. I'll keep at it as long as they want me to. When they finally do move on I will have this scene to remind me of our bedtime ritual.